Narrenschiff

Oh, don’t I just detest these digital internet hellish machines!!! They are the invention of the devil! They are just like my ex-wives, all four of them! They promise you heaven and earth, but when push comes to shove, they have a will of their own, and that will is never yours! Abolish them, I say! No, not ex-wives (breakfast sherry will take care of that): computers, I mean. Computers and all the Infernal Technology (a.k.a. IT) in the world!

Let me explain the solid reasons behind my justified ire. Just the other day, I wrote an absolutely brilliant text on why I had decided to start a blog (see below, dear reader). I laboured over it. I polished it. I made sure it was worthy of my most esteemed readers. Then I posted it as they – them puppeteers that pull the strings of the Google blogs, I mean! - told me how to do. And then… nothing happened. No matter what you try, my brand new blog does not appear anywhere when you Google it up. Not under Metis. Not under Meet. And – worst of all – not when you type Mittington!

BUT WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE? I immediately screamed out at the roof beams of my cottage. I am the author of threescore famous, celebrated, much acclaimed books. I am one of the most proficient journalists of the 20^th century. I have known more prominent celebrities than the top models they have dreamed of as they, well, played with themselves throughout the whole of their adolescence! And here they ignore me! They disdain me! Nobody does that to Alfred B. Mittington! NOBODY!

So, I decided to sue Google. Of course, to do so, a man has to find out HOW to sue Google. And the best way to find out, I figured, was to Google how to sue Google. In that manner I would add a marvellous teaspoonful of irony to my honeysweet revenge.

Unfortunately the smart boys of this sharkish company clearly came prepared for the eventuality. When I Googled “Sue Google”, I was told that Sue Google lives in Seattle, Washington, and is at present a hairdresser of some renown, who specializes in dreadlocks for Nordic types in her establishment on 4^th avenue. Then I got treated to a lawsuit by a young lady from Tasmania who just happened to be standing stark naked in her bay window when the Google camera van passed by, so that she appeared, for the whole world to see, in all her superb glory, on Google Street View (but WHAT WOMAN of the merest modesty stands stark naked in her bay window in plain daylight when trucks drivers pass by outside…??) Then there was the case of an elderly lady who took Google Maps to court for – according to her - giving her wrong, nay: criminal, walking directions, which forced her to walk into & under a passing truck… Finally, there was a gentleman who objected to the details of an orgy, in which he was inadvertently caught up against his will as he was on his way to a charity event at the church of his choice, being described in news items posted by the Google Company in some dark nook of the digital twilight zone they call their own…

I was stunned. Really now! What a bunch! What a set of losers. Who wants to board such a Narrenschiff? What reasonable man of taste and refinement will run the risk of being considered part of such a company? Therefore I dropped the idea of taking Google to court, and decided to try again, with another post, and see what it brings.

Will the Ghost in the Machine be more merciful on me today, dear readers? Will it allow the world, you that is, a glimpse into an honest bloke’s blog? The future must tell. But this dire experience (which, incidentally, - and I do not mean this as a threat to the Google Company at all - is extremely bad for an old man’s heart condition!) drives home to me, once again, the truth about these infernal machines that are taking over the world as we stand by and do nothing. They have a mind of their own. They do as they please. Whether you like it or not. Or, poured into the shape of an aphorism which perhaps my keener readers may grasp:

  

A computer spell check is a marvellous device; but if you don’t watch out it will spoil your best Jew-the-most.

Alfred B., Monday 5 January, from Ithaca. (Blood pressure 140 / 90 at 12 noon…)